Lithonia, GA Immigration Law Firms & Lawyers

Based on what you stated there is no pending criminal charges and if this is the case, from immigration perspective, you have no issues to be concerned with at this time.

Although it is not clear, it sounds like you are a U.S. citizen who has been asked to serve as a joint sponsor in your friend's marriage-based immigration application. A determination of the sufficiency of your income will be based upon your documentable CURRENT income, although proof of recent years' income may be important too. The starting place to determine the amount of income you will need is to see what the gap is between the income of your friend's spouse (the Petitioner) and the amount required pursuant to the published poverty guidelines. You then will need to document your current earnings as sufficient to cover that gap while still supporting yourself and your family at the requisite level. Usually proof of current income includes a letter from an employer and year-to-date documentation of earnings, but if you are self-employed then you will need considerably more. Gross receipts do not equate to "income" for this analysis. Generally a self-employed person will need to provide documentary evidence that includes a current business license, current financial statements and bank records. If your friend is represented by an immigration attorney, he/she should be ready to advise you about your eligibility to serve as a joint sponsor and to advise about the appropriate documentation. If your friend is not represented by an immigration attorney, it would be wise for your friend to engage one, since these issues can be complex and failure to provide sufficient documents can result in very long delays or even denial of a case.

As you may know, eligibility for naturalization includes two similar-sounding, but different, components: (1) legal residence and (2) physical presence. In general, a single absence of 180 days will trigger a rebuttable legal presumption that a Permanent Resident has abandoned his/her residence in the U.S., and a single absence of one year or more will trigger a non-rebuttable legal determination of abandonment of status. Beyond this, a petitioner for naturalization generally must show that during the relevant period of time (generally, the 5-year period immediately before the filing of the petition for naturalization, plus the period between filing and date of oath ceremony) he/she spent no less than half of all the days physically present in the U.S. There are some exceptions to these rules, but more information would be needed to assess whether they might apply to your children. Especially in light of the risk of an adverse determination about "abandonment," as well as the importance of success with the naturalization petitions, it would be wise for your family to engage an immigration attorney to carefully review all of the details about each child, to assess eligibility and to properly handle the naturalization petitioning process. Some immigration law firms, including mine, offer legal services on a "flat fee" basis so that a client will know the total expense from the very beginning, and a few immigration law firms, including mine, offer an initial consultation free of charge.